Not much going on. Just posting a few pages so I can close some tabs and windows…

Passive Aggressive notes… very amusing, not that many so far, but some of them are pure gold. And by gold, I mean hookers.

More images from Stardust are online here and on the official website that has been updated some. Very pretty, so can’t wait.

Geekwise, Starcraft 2 has been announced and there are videos and trailers and such on the website that make me wish I was wearing a diaper at the time I visited it. So looks great.

And finally, some vids from japan, cause they’re all insane and awesome at the same time…

Another one of them game show clips where its all bullet-time on stage, this time as a food fight…

And the worlds fastests secretary or evil robot. You decide…

Ah the Japanese… I miss that Naoki bastard. Where the hell are you man?

Spent the good portion of today catching up on some really awesome sleep. In fact the shower I eventually had last night was quite possibly one of the best showers I’ve had. Filming and editing like crazy the whole weekend can really take it out of you. Next week the heats are being screened at uni, mine is during the second heat on Wednesday night, and I’m looking forward to it along with a whole lot of others. Would love to go to all four of them, but I think I might be missing out on one.

After the competition, I’d vowed to stay away from filmmaking and films in general for a while. And then this evening was reminded I was to attend a student shoot to supervise and took off not long after checking that all was well to watch a movie. Now I’ve got a copy of Tideland sitting in front of me, that I’ve been meaning to watch and return to its rightful owner for sometime now. Zodiac tomorrow night and some teaching at the end of the week. There is also an upcoming short film at wintec I should get onto helping prep for, editing on Pictures of You which I should get back into and a footage for a musician’s promo I should really start cutting together. I’m not complaining, I just wanted at least a week or so to break away from it all.

Also it’s been pointed out to me that this website and this blog is coming up on one year since being created. Checking in on the first post, I started blogging this site just after last year’s 48 Hour film competition where I was taken advantage of while drunk and forced into a polar bear costume for a friend that morning and eventually got more drunk by the end of the day to most recieve a most amusing of injuries… happy birthday website.

And so the 48 Hour Film Competition has ended and this weekend, has made it onto one of the top spots in my ever so hard to remember list of really perceptively long periods of time. And thus, I will hold off a much needed shower to post a blog to try to recap the events…

7pm Friday, I’m at the museum a few beers down and pulling out the Genre… Grindhouse. Although I was personally hoping for Unnecessary Sequel or Based On True Story, we had a very fun idea for Grindhouse and got to writing it.

By about 11pm, we’d gotten pretty much a decent script, made with the attitude of Blaxploitation films entitled “Flash Sanders: Funk Detective”.

At around midnight or just after, we were at our first location, which was the Chartwell mall’s new carpark, which I have always made a note that it’s lights were always on. So we go to filming and very pretty filming it was, but with about two more shots left to shoot for the opening, we got an overzealous janitor or employee of some kind kicking us out and vowing for revenge.

New location and we shoot the next scene somewhere else on the streets instead. Nice and brief and then its off to another location: an underpass in Hillcrest which probably holds the title of most overused location in a low budget student level production. But the shots look good and by the time we were done it was 5 in the morning.

Got back to Sash’s house which fronted as our base of operations and I got onto capturing our footage and cutting some of it. Sleep eventually came after that.

About 10 in the morning, I’m awake and editing again. Midday we discover that our very cool and very pretty opening we shot, we couldn’t get permission to use as a location. Trying not to think about it, we started shooting at the Academy at 3pm, which took a bit longer than expected and by the time we were outside and shooting the ending, we were losing light fast and with some rapid filming, got it done and cut together, the scene amusingly goes from day to night rather fast. But it still worked and that’s okay.

Shot a few more bits in the night and the back to base for more editing for me and food mostly for others. At this point we’d not really assessed the situation of our unusable opening, but problem solving eventually came in the end, I’ll associate the idea coming mostly with the music we eventually got and listening to it over and over again I just couldn’t shake the idea of a tv movie like opening, and so off to uni at about midnight to film some crazy shots of all sorts, including a dummy being thrown off a building, which looked great.

Back again to base at 3 in the morning for some more inspired filming and then more editing for me. A little sleep and its onto more editing in the morning.

At this point, I’m hating editing.

The rest of Sunday was spent editing and waiting for stress and editing some more and waiting for more stress. But I got the edit together by 3pm and very tightly cut too. Spent the rest of the time fixing audio an adding foley and wishing I had more time to colour correct, which I didn’t even get to do to one frame of the film unfortunately. But the raw footage still looks good.

Our tape got handed in with ten minutes to go, but man… there were some really close entries going on. One guy made it with a few seconds to go, but he had no tape as the laptop and camera he was running and printing with at the same time had stopped printing. And another team turned up no more than twenty seconds after the deadline had closed. Total madness and there were actually quite a few teams that didn’t make it on time and a lot more horror stories of things being told.

Overall it was a helluva lot of fun. I pretty much hit a magic high of tiredness at some point on Saturday evening and have been riding it out all the way up til now (its almost two in the morning).

It was kinda dumb of me to be doing all the directing, filming, audio and editing of the film… Prior to the competition, I’d been prepping people and making sure I’d have lots and lots of people on hand all over the city for whatever situation and genre we’d get. In the end, I used none of the contacts and starting here, I must apologise to many and all for kinda losing contact with, not keeping up to date or just zoning out of reality during the competition. It was pretty insane and once caught up in it, really hard to focus on anything else in the world. But it worked itself out in the end and to most satisfying and amusing results. We’ve watched the film a couple of times since handing it in to put our minds to rest, but crazily enough we still found it funny even after the million time of watching it… probably cause we were so tired and strung out at that point. Or at least that’s how I see it.

This post is just phenominally huge. And its probably full of crazy jibber jabber and if you’ve actually read down this far, holy crap, congrats to you. Here are good looking images for you trouble.

*temporarily gone*

We’ve got our genre (Grindhouse) tonight and we’re happy. It’s at least not the genre we didn’t want.

On the road right now, we’ve just finished our script entitled Flash Sanders, Funk Detective and we’re about to head out to our first shoot.

Gonna try and keep updating this as we go, but can’t garuantee its consistency. Couldn’t get the TXT to blog thing to work on time, so whatever.

Off we go.

The weekend turned out to be a bit of madness for me. Madness in the sense that I went to bed on the Saturday night (technically Sunday morning, but time is irrelevant in my world) and almost like a drunken bender came out of it on the Monday afternoon wondering where my day had gone. I must have been in and out of slumber over a twenty something period, catching up on all the late nights and little sleep I’d been getting for the past couple of weeks. It was very weird and disorientating and really, it wasn’t until the Tuesday morning that I felt more proper and right for the world.

Since then, there has been some more prepping for the 48. Turns out that our team is in the same heat as some other friendly competition (yeah, you know who you are) and last years winner of the cinematography prize. I myself am quite conflicted in which I want to compete for. By far, the best cinematography win will come out with a much better prize and something I’d totally laud over and rub all over my body with (a camera just to clear up), but winning overall for the region is just as good. Secretly I want to win something, but overall I just want to have a lot of fun doing this. As its been a crazy amount of work recently, but after this it’ll be some down time with just the editing of Pictures of You to concentrate on and to do the 48 hour competition and just have fun with it will be a great transition between the two.

Other than that, the only other thing that’s been really making me feel all so sexily giddy inside is the growing coverage of Wong Kar Wai’s new film My Blueberry Nights, which features the always hot Norah Jones and in WKW’s hands, super-hot. Witness the Cannes poster of awesome here, the stills of sexy here, here and here and the first trailer of pure p0wnage here.

Have returned from my most brief of Auckland excursions after witnessing the fitness of Dylan Moran. Absolute hell getting up there on a Friday night though and finding parking in the inner city was a hell and made a tad late to the start of the show and made me wish cancer on several parked car owner’s future children and probably cancer on their cancer… just to be sure. But yes, the man was most funny and and I touched myself in comedic delight through it all.

Meanwhile, to reinforce my everlasting love of Bruce Willis, who just recently took up to posting on the AICN talkback boards about a whole bunch of stuff on Die Hard 4 and answering questions on his opinions about his films, an amusing time of him trying prove he was the real deal and best of all, this bit about Michael Bay…

“I would rather eat a live baby in front of my grandma than have Michael Bay direct a DIE HARD movie. I would rather go hunting with Dick Cheney than let that car engine in a human skin leave his satanic fingerprints on John McClane. In fact, this new PG-13 thing is the only part of ruining modern action movies that Michael Bay is not personally responsible for. The rest of it is all him. Don’t even fucking say those words in the same sentence, you’re only gonna give them ideas for part 5. It’s like saying Candyman in front of a mirror, that motherfucker will show up and snort John McClane’s soul right in front of you and then piss it out on your shoes,” wrote Willis. “Would have ruined DH4. Few people will work with him now, and I know I will never work with him again.”

I totally gave myself the bad touch reading that over and over again and now scientists are now baffled as to how Bruce Willis’ awesomeness just keeps getting bigger.

The week still keeps churning on. 12 hour day today of teach and work and not working and working again. Tomorrow morning is more work with not enough sleep to be had, and then up to Auckland for a few hours to watch Dylan Moran (yayness) and then back down again as there is more work to be had on the Saturday morning. Which, hopefully afterwards, reserves the weekend for some 48 hour planning, drinking and more planning.

Not much else, except for this awesome article curtsey of Robbie which I will just requote here…

ORLANDO, FL (AP) — A man dressed like a ninja broke into an Orlando home, smashed furniture, attacked two people and then vanished without a trace.

Three people were inside the home watching a movie Sunday afternoon when the ninja ran in, punched one man in the mouth and then kicked another man.

The victims — who did not want to be identified — reported that the costumed man slammed the DVD player and VCR into a dresser. Then he pulled out a knife and started waiving it around. The victims say the intruder didn’t steal anything from the house but took several pictures with his cell phone camera.

When it was time for the ninja to make his escape, he didn’t disappear in a cloud of smoke. The victims say the man ran down the street to a black BMW and drove off.

Which is just great, cause as I’ve said in the past, it’s scientifically proven that anything with a ninja in it is 150% cooler.

This also reminds me of an earlier article I read a couple of years ago and have lauded many times ever since. I can’t find the direct link for it anymore as it has probably been taken down from the CNN site, but thanks to the bloggers is available to be reposted here…

A 6-foot-tall, 275-pound bearded man crashed a children’s birthday party in Oak Forest, identified himself as “vengeance,” then helped himself to a piece of cake, police said.

The incident occurred earlier this month at a home in the 14800 block of South Landings Lane in the south suburb, Deputy Police Chief Nick Sparacino said.

When the owner of the home asked the man who he was, the intruder replied, “I am vengeance. I am the knight. I am Batman.” Then the man went into the kitchen, cut a piece of birthday cake, took it into the living room and ate it.

After continued questioning by the homeowner, the man left the house and drove off in a red 1988 Cadillac.

Hooray for such oddness and fun to be discovered in the world.

Tired. The last few weeks have been busy as hell. At the start of this weekend, I thought I’d do my shifts and finally have a day or two off, but straight into it afterwards, I’ve just been keeping myself busy with uni preps, student shoots, Pictures of You stuff and 48 Hour planning.

Of course, I’ve had quiet moments, but not moments where I’m just blobbing out and not really doing anything. Time for relaxation will come eventually. Friday I’m hoping. Until then there will be video store work, uni teachings, more student shoots and a lot more 48 Hour planning. Which I’m very much focusing and looking forward to.

Slowly, I’m assembling our team awesome for the 48 and with Ross, going through scripts to make sure that come the weekend of the competition, we can go “yep, we’ve got this genre covered, we can adapt this script with these required elements and yes, we’ve got these actors and props and locations and whatnots ready… lets shoot this fucker.”

No doubt, the actual weekend of the shoot won’t go exactly like that, but if we plan it well and truely enough, it won’t be as bad. Here’s hoping we’ll do well though. According to the 48 website, because of having too many entries in the Auckland region, some of their teams will be competing in the Hamilton heats and that’s unwanted competition. And competition is good (looking at you guys, you know who you are), but them Auckland people better watch themselves. But yeah, core team is in place. Assembling more stand-bys. Rock and Roll.

And now for something completely different… 18000 naked people in Mexico City.

And thus I return to the warm glow of the internet.

Got a phone call on Tuesday that I was needed in Auckland on that day as opposed to the late evening Wednesday as originally planned and thus, moving with lightning speed to organise my stuff and things in my absence, I shot up to a swanky hotel room with my computer in tow and got nice and drunk.

Unfortunately I was kept nicely busy working, but also had very limited internet access and no time to catch up with friends as originally planned. Also wanted to finally watch Sunshine while up there, but everytime, there was something else that needed to be done.

The show itself went really well and it was a little tense at first during the pack in where it seemed like everyone was going mental and at their breaking points and there was very little sleep to be gotten at 2 o’clock in the morning the night before, with a 6am wake up call time in the morning, but everything pulled itself through on the day and there was much less stress during the show from what I observed and a very well rewarded beer at the end.

And it’s all good as I’ll be getting quite a nice paycheck from it, and the mad rush back this morning got me home just in time to tutor another class, which turned out pretty cool. It was hot and indoors and stuff in the classroom, so we went outside instead to learn and plan their short films which are starting to shape up better as things have been a little disorganised over the past few weeks for them.

But onto getting some rest now as I’m working the late shifts this weekend and I’ve still got a few emails to send out, overdue stuff to mark and some sleep to be gotten.

Come Monday I’m looking forward to a little bit of time off, though not much really. Got to supervise some shoots and make sure students aren’t doing too much of what we used to do back then and I’m also very privilaged to tinker around at Wintec and demonstrate and play with their new High Definition camera, which ironically, is exactly the same one I was pushing to get for the Pictures of You set, which by the way, is still being edited, with some rather dramatic cuts being made and all going well.

Right, onto more work before work. Shall post silly stuff soon.

Been so busy for the last few days, I’ve been ignoring calls and messages and locking myself away from society getting work done. Actually, it’s not really that dramatic, but I have definitely been busy and this week looks to be a lot worse. Video for the event I’m gonna be at on Thursday is almost done, or at least done enough to be satisfied with. I’ve got to head up to Auckland probably tomorrow night as the organisers want me on hand earlier than planned, which means I’ll probably have to skip out on teaching a few classes and juggling a few shifts at work this week. I should be back Friday for at least one class and to work the graveyard shifts at the video store. Hopefully about that time wheels will finally go into motion for the 48 hour, which has been in a kind of stasis at the moment considering my hectic lifestyle. But that should work itself out, and I’m feeling pretty confident that our group is going to fare quite well in the competition. Also been slowly planning at least one short film to DP on, which I’m looking forward to. Another film maker guy is considering me to do his one as well, which makes things very interesting for me to be looked out for like that. Anyway, I’m so freaking tired, I’ll have to wake up in about three hours to get the rest of my week sorted out so this has been a rather random jotting down of points that are just coming into my head as I type them and I know that there is a hundred other things that I’ve totally neglected to mention here, but that should all, fingers crossed, be covered in another post sometime. Oh and just a note to those that have been trying to contact me, yeah, I’ll be getting back to you soon.

Ah yes and Bel, if your reading this… you meeting Brian K Vaughan… I hate you.